1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and a system for recognizing a parking space, and more particularly to a technique for recognizing a parking space by using a camera and an ultrasonic sensor.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Due to the development of the automotive industry, the number of automobiles has been greatly increased and automotive technologies have been vigorously developed. In particular, due to the development of electronic technologies, numerous researches have been made in terms of intelligent automotive technologies. Among them, driver assistance systems (DASs) have been greatly improved in terms of technical advances, which have been applied to intelligent automobiles.
Among the driver assistance systems, parking assistance systems have been also actively researched in the intelligent automotive field, and have been practically applied to automobiles. Such parking assistance systems are used for aiding a driver to park an automobile.
Such a parking assistance system may be divided into a parking space recognition unit, a parking track generation unit, and a steering control unit. In addition, the parking space recognition unit may be divided into a parallel parking space recognition unit and a perpendicular parking space recognition unit. Parking space recognition may be performed, using ultrasonic waves, a rear-view camera, or a laser scanner.
Among the conventional parking space recognition methods, a parking space recognition method using ultrasonic waves has a problem in that a parking space cannot be precisely recognized since an edge of a counterpart vehicle adjacent to a parking space desired for parking a vehicle cannot be precisely extracted due to the limitation in terms of distance and resolution of ultrasonic waves. A conventional parking space recognition method using a camera has a problem in that a parking space cannot be precisely recognized since the position of a counterpart vehicle cannot be precisely recognized by determining the distance to the counterpart vehicle.
That is, the conventional parking space recognition methods using either an ultrasonic sensor or a camera for recognizing a parking space have a problem in that they cannot precisely recognize a parking space due to the disadvantages of the ultrasonic sensor and the camera, respectively.